{"id":60376,"date":"2021-12-03T11:33:09","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T11:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/12\/03\/we-just-feel-it-racism-plagues-us-military-academies\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T11:18:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T11:18:32","slug":"we-just-feel-it-racism-plagues-us-military-academies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2021\/12\/03\/we-just-feel-it-racism-plagues-us-military-academies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We just feel it\u2019: Racism plagues US military academies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eight years after he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point<\/a>, Geoffrey Easterling remains astonished by the Confederate history still memorialized on the storied academy\u2019s campus \u2013 the six-foot-tall painting of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the library, the barracks dormitory named for Lee and the Lee Gate on Lee Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Black student at the Army academy, he remembers feeling \u201cdevastated\u201d when a classmate pointed out the slave also depicted in the life-size Lee painting. \u201cHow did the only Black person who got on a wall in this entire humongous school \u2014 how is it a slave?\u201d he recalls thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a diversity admissions officer, he later traveled the country recruiting students to West Point from underrepresented communities. \u201cIt was so hard to tell people like, \u2018Yeah, you can trust the military,\u2019 and then their kids Google and go \u2018Why is there a barracks named after Lee?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nation\u2019s military academies provide a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services and, for the better part of the last decade, they have welcomed more racially diverse students each year. But beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions volunteer little about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an Associated Press story<\/a> earlier this year, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less attention has been paid to the premiere institutions that produce a significant portion of the services\u2019 officer corps \u2013 the academies of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some graduates of color from the nation\u2019s top military schools who endured what they described as a hostile environment are left questioning the military maxim that all service members wearing the same uniform are equal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That includes Carlton Shelley II, who was recruited to play football for West Point from his Sarasota, Florida, high school and entered the academy in 2009. On the field, he described the team as \u201ca brotherhood,\u201d where his skin color never impacted how he was treated. But off the field, he said, he and other Black classmates too often were treated like the stereotype of the angry Black man \u2013 an experience that brought him to tears at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was repeatedly in trouble or being corrected for infractions that were not actually infractions,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a very deliberate choice to dig and to push on certain individuals compared with other cadets \u2014 white cadets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xavier Bruce, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1999 and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during his 24 years of duty, said that for him, it was the ongoing slights directed at him as a Black man, rather than openly racist behavior, that cut deep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe just feel it, we feel the energy behind it, and it just eats us away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some students of color have spotlighted what they see as systemic racism and discrimination at the academies by creating Instagram accounts \u2014 ” Black at West Point<\/a>,\u201d ” Black at USAFA<\/a> ” and ” Black at USNA<\/a> ” \u2014 to relate their personal experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was walking with a classmate and we were both speaking Spanish when a white, male upperclassman turned around and said \u2018Speak English, this is America,\u2019\u201d a 2020 Air Force Academy graduate wrote in one post.<\/p>\n\n\n\t